


once upon a time

by wonnietv (heoneybee)



Category: K-pop, Monsta X (Band)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, M/M, alternative universe, break ups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 19:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16750213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heoneybee/pseuds/wonnietv
Summary: when minhyuk is 21 he finds a star that shines brighter than the sun and calls him honey; like the colour of the bleached roots of his hair and the sweetness of his smile. he sticks and gravitates towards him like a moth towards flame and doesn’t even think of getting burned.





	once upon a time

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess and my second fill for the joohyuk bingo

once upon a time there was a boy. or maybe there was a woman and a man and a house, with yellow walls and a green picket fence, tucked into a corner of a small district in gwangju. minhyuk is nine and he’s bright but not yet sure how his fairytale starts.

but he knows that it starts once upon a time and with him and the inexplicable urge to search for something brighter than the sun.

minhyuk is nine when he decides that he’s a knight in shining armour and that he loves to venture. he’s nine when the dangers of the outside world start to haunt him. there’s shadows at night and monsters in his dreams, there’s the pointy fingers and shrill laughs of evil demons, all of them in the guise of his classmates, at recess. minhyuk tries to fight them all because he’s a knight and in fairytales the good knights always win.

his mother doesn’t like her son’s self proclaimed profession because by the time minhyuk is eleven his body is bruised and battered.

minhyuk is thirteen when he finds a star. her eyes shine and twinkle, her smile sends sparks up his spine and the long and lonesome journey home doesn’t feel all that dark; even in winter when the lights dim early. at the age of fourteen, he found two more stars and spotted one more and minhyuk knows that when he looks up at night, the sky is full of them, but each star is mesmerising and precious to him and on his long journey for the brightest thing to find, that sets his heart aflame with a supernova of light, minhyuk collects them.

at the age of sixteen, the young knight has matured and gained experience. minhyuk battled monsters; gruesome and palpable, and hideous beasts; abstract and invincible. minhyuk battled them all — the young knight is only sixteen when he watches them lower his father’s ashes beneath the ground.

minhyuk is eighteen and he lives in the dusk. there’s shadows and crooks and corners and the unknown and with the weight of the world and exhaustion from his never-ending battles, he sets off into the big city.

he’s a knight, but at nineteen, minhyuk keeps looking and finding trouble. the boisterous boom of bass and biting smell of alcohol and smoke cling to him, poison his veins. he’s just living a little, he’ll say if someone asks. rarely anyone does.

minhyuk is twenty when things become routine and fall into place. he picks up running and goes to classes. it’s to fight the monsters, the knight thinks, the one that settled within him, creep and curl around his very core like a looming shadow. he makes new friends, young knights, not unlike himself, and the battles he meets on his ventures grow easier.

but amongst the stars and the knights and the looming darkness, minhyuk hasn’t forgotten the beginning of his once upon a time and the goal of his quest.

when minhyuk is 21 he finds a star that shines brighter than the sun and calls him honey; like the colour of the bleached roots of his hair and the sweetness of his smile. he sticks and gravitates towards him like a moth towards flame and doesn’t even think of getting burned.

jooheon is a star like no other and minhyuk forgets all else when he’s around. the happy ever after the knight has always strived for seems within reach, clasped gently in jooheon’s soft palms. minhyuk holds them, holds his face and feels like he’s holding his whole world, tenderly.

minhyuk is twenty three and jooheon is twenty two when they move together. he doesn’t want to be a knight anymore; he thinks his fairytale is concluded with the brightest star that fell from the sky and right into his hands.

the years pass by and minhyuk has grown too old for fairytales. he thinks he sees his star lose his shine with each day, sees jooheon grow more stressed and unhappy, feels the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. he doesn’t hold his soft hands or his round face, doesn’t feel like he can ever grasp the size of the world again. jooheon’s hair is now dark and his smile is bitter, like ground coffee. minhyuk doesn’t fight monsters or shadows anymore, he fights jooheon, with words too loud and too cruel to ever meant the gap that started to grow between them.

minhyuk is thirty five and he’s not a knight and jooheon is not a star, but a person that walks out as easily as he had entered the door of his apartment. his last words are a warning for minhyuk to stop dreaming, to be realistic. ‘ _don’t live with your head in the clouds, life is not a fairytale_.’

once upon a time minhyuk believed in fairytales and knights and happy ever after’s, but life is not a fairytale and minhyuk is thirty five when he finally wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> i also now have a separate fic [twt](https://twitter.com/wonnietv) just for spoilers and updates as well as a [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/wonnietv) for questions n prompts!


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